Jon Kasdan who co-wrote ‘Solo: A Star Wars Story‘ has been talking a lot about the film as of late and one key point that he wanted to talk about was how little Thandie Newton (‘Westworld’) ended up being in the film. Now, we’re going to be talking about a spoiler concerning the character of Val, so if you haven’t seen the movie yet this would be a good time to head out, buy it, watch it, love it, and come back to see what we’re talking about.
Now that the spoiler-free crowd is out of our hair, which is sadly larger than usual with the low box office numbers that ‘Solo: A Star Wars Story’ ended up having, we can talk about Thandie Newton’s character Val!
Val was the love of Beckett’s life and to push his character into taking on Solo and Chewie there was a need to eliminate everyone who previously worked for the career criminal. This ended with Val’s death which is something no one wanted as she was quite possibly a more complex and interesting character than he was, even if she died pretty shortly into the film in the grand scheme of things.
Talking about her death, Kasdan tweeted:
“In retrospect, Thandie Newton may have actually been too good and too interesting as Val. It was always in the design of the story that Beckett would lose his trusted crew members during the Conveyex Job-gone-wrong and be forced to rely on newbies, Han and Chewie, and this would also open the door for Lando, Qi’ra, and L3 to join the crew, but Thandie is so compelling to watch that the death of her character feels a little like a cheat. It’s an odd and unexpected problem that comes with working with such amazing, compelling actors in the Star Wars universe. You just want more of them.”
Had they found a way for Thandie to be out of commission, it would have been a great way to have her return in the sequel which is unlikely to happen.
Do you agree that Thandie Newton was “too good and too interesting as Val? Could the writers have found just a motivating way to remove her from the action without taking her life? Share your thoughts in the comments below!
